“By descending into Hell, He made Hell captive. He embittered it when it tasted of His flesh. And Isaiah, foretelling this, did cry: Hell, said he, was embittered, when it encountered You in the lower regions. It was embittered, for it was abolished. It was embittered, for it was mocked. It was embittered, for it […]

Fr. Lawrence Farley I suppose that the adjective “Pentecostal” in the title should be placed in scare quotes, because by “Pentecostal Orthodoxy” I do not refer to a combination of Protestant Pentecostalism and Orthodoxy, but that Orthodoxy itself is essentially Pentecostal. In his book The Orthodox Church (then) Timothy Ware described the Orthodox Church as “a continued […]

JULY 4, 2016 BY FR. JOHN A. PECK by the Rev. Dcn. Dr. Timothy J. Wilkinson The protestant Evangelical world has, for many years now, appropriated the Jewish Seder service in an attempt to ‘reconnect’ with something more ancient, and I would contend, something more authentic. We offer this excellent piece by Dcn Tim Wilkinson, Reprinted (with […]

Fr. Lawrence Farley I suppose that most pastors have had the experience of a young parishioner approaching them privately and confiding in them their suspicion or decision that they were gay, bisexual, or transgender. Such confusion is in the air, has the Nihil Obstat of both secular culture and governmental sanction, and also bestows a kind of […]

David Bentley Hart 2015 The long history of defective Christian scriptural exegesis occasioned by problematic translations is a luxuriant one, and its riches are too numerous and exquisitely various adequately to classify. But I think one can arrange most of them along a single continuum in four broad divisions: some misreadings are caused by a […]

by St. John Climacus “Repentance is the renewal of Baptism. Repentance is a contract with God for a second life… Repentance is a constant distrust of bodily comfort… Repentance is the daughter of hope and the renunciation of despair. Repentance is reconciliation with the Lord by practice of good deeds contrary to the sins. Repentance […]

SYOSSET, NY [OCA] Today—March 18, 2019—marks the fourth anniversary of the repose of Protopresbyter Thomas Hopko, Dean Emeritus of Saint Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary, Yonkers, NY, and noted Orthodox Christian priest, theologian, preacher, and speaker. Father Thomas was the beloved husband of Matushka Anne [Schmemann] Hopko, whom he married on June 9, 1963. They are the […]

Frederica Mathewes-Green [Eighth Day Institute, Feb 2019] Back in my college days, when dinosaurs roamed the earth, I was a hippie and a spiritual seeker. The range of spiritual options on campus was broad, and I sampled a bit of everything: Ananda Marga Hinduism, Zen Buddhism, Hare Krishna, Transcendental Meditation. I say I was a […]

SYOSSET, NY [OCA] On Monday, January 28, 2019, His Beatitude, Metropolitan Tikhon and the members of the Holy Synod of Bishops of the Orthodox Church in America issued an Archpastoral Letter concerning the situation of the Church in Ukraine and related matters, as decided during the Fall Session of the Holy Synod held October 23-25, 2018. The complete text […]